Dear members of a dying race,

 

Perhaps some may feel I am a good example of what appears to be looming sadly across the profession.

 

I have just resigned my position as archivist at Wigan Archives with no other post to go to due to my complete and utter disgust at the way those in power ( vison crazy heritage 'professionals' ) with little or no awareness of the role of the archivist and his or her job can behave when let rampant.

 

Matters plummetted downhill when 'heritage consultants', the notorious ABL were paid £20,000 to be briefed by those who had not a clue what to do with their archives yet feel to justify their positions they must do something. ABL concoct a one inch thick Draft Vison containing the most farcical waffle I have ever come across. They assess the archives mostly on the basis of bums on seats and never once speak to users or the archivist. I challenge ABL saying that none of their staff have archival backgrounds to which one of my managers ( a long term museum officer who chose ABL for the task ) said "Ah yes that may be true, but they come very well recommended"

 

Within this crackpot vision management hiding behind ABL suggested centralisation of heritage staff, meaning the archivist would be separated from the archive by 8 miles and only open the service on an 'outreach' basis! In the meantime let's digitise the archive they say without a hint of the technicalities or costs at the same time storing the archive down the salt mine in Cheshire.

 

Those two ideas after detailed costings came to £14 million for the digitisation ( taking 15 years ) and £70,000 pa for storage down the mine. Considering I had the grand budget of £0 to operate the archives you might have thought those heritage professional visioners may have thought twice about these proposals. Of course not, they are now carved in the Vision in stone with not a clue as regards how on earth these projects would ever be funded.

 

A sign of the times as regards managerial attitudes towards archives can be seen in the number of times I have heard senior libraries or heritage managers saying "archivists are nothing special, all you need to know is where to find items in the strongrooms"!!. When I openly object to the new strategy and hint at moving on I am subjected to the most trite soft soaping: "You are a much valued member of the 'team' and it would a great loss to lose you, on the other hand starting in two weeks we want you to work on a museum documentation project for a year for three days a week 8 miles away at your expense".

 

Today I worked from 8.00 until 7.30 at night labouring at a chemical works. I'm shattered but everyone I met spoke to me in plain English, did not waffle to me or patronise me, did not lie to me and actually had respect for me and the menial task I was doing including what I term 'real' managers, those rare souls who actually know their job and don't pretend they know best about others jobs.

 

Sadly I feel the steamroller has begun to edge it's way forward over the profession. Archivists have always been misunderstood and undervalued and I was guilty of this myself when a museum curator. Now that 'professional' waffle-bound heritage visioneers have their teeth into the world of the archivist I fear the worst!

Alan Davies

Tyldesley

Greater Manchester